Sestak’s first ad hits Toomey on corporate taxes

Breaking his TV silence more than three months after a wildly successful primary advertising blitz, Democrat Senate candidate Joe Sestak is up with his campaign’s first commercial of the general election cycle.

The 30-second spot, coming just over two months before Election Day, strikes a stridently populist tone, juxtaposing Republican nominee Pat Toomey’s previous statements about corporate taxes with news clips about falling tax payments by corporations. The ad uses a 2007 CNBC appearance by Toomey, who at the time headed the conservative Club for Growth.

“I think the solution is to eliminate corporate taxes altogether,” Toomey said at the time.

The ad buy comes after Toomey and his conservative allies have been pummeling Sestak on the airwaves with negative spots for months. Democrats only began to insert themselves into the air wars a couple weeks ago, when the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee launched a spot hitting Toomey on his past as a derivatives trader.

After reviewing the facts, pa2010.com finds the ad to be accurate.

The ad buy is also somewhat unusual for Sestak’s TV consulting firm, The Campaign Group, which is more often known for saving all advertising money for the closing weeks of a race.

But the ad buy is relatively small, according to The Inquirer, which first reported the new spot. Reflecting Toomey’s considerable financial advantage and the fact that Sestak is still rebuilding a war chest depleted by his competitive primary against Arlen Specter, no TV time has been booked in the expensive Philadelphia media market. The campaign has so far reserved limited time in the Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Erie, Johnstown and Wilkes-Barre media markets.

Noting that Toomey was called “Wall Street’s Congressman” by the magazine Derivatives Strategy, the ad says “he’s for them, not for us.”

See the ad below.